A memorial to Melbourne’s controversial founder John Batman has been severed in half and an Australia Day stage in Ringwood vandalised on the eve of January 26.
A memorial to Melbourne’s controversial founder John Batman has been severed in half and an Australia Day stage in Ringwood vandalised on the eve of January 26.
By Cassandra Morgan
January 25, 2025 — 10.46am
A monument memorialising Melbourne’s controversial founder John Batman has been toppled on the eve of January 26.
The bluestone monument, which sits next to the Queen Victoria Market site in Melbourne’s CBD, was originally erected in 1881.
Vandals targeted the memorial ahead of Australia Day on Sunday, with police called to reports it was damaged about 2.20am on Saturday.
The monument was severed in half, its top spilling out onto concrete and dirt beside it.
“Police are investigating after a statue was damaged in Melbourne’s CBD on 25 January,” a Victoria Police spokeswoman said.
Police urged anyone with information about the vandalism to contact Crime Stoppers.
The City of Melbourne was aware of the damage to the Batman monument at Queen Victoria Market early on Saturday morning, a council spokesman said.
“Victoria Police have been notified and are investigating the incident,” the spokesman said.
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The monument is notable for deliberately writing Aboriginal people out of Melbourne’s history, as its original inscription refers to the city in the mid-1830s as “land then unoccupied”, according to the council.
A plaque was added to the monument in 1992 acknowledging Aboriginal people as the traditional occupiers of the land, and then replaced with another, more strongly worded plaque recognising Aboriginal people in 2004.
More than two dozen locations around Melbourne are named after Batman, including multiple parks, streets, avenues, a hill and a railway station.
But many have begun to look less than kindly on Batman’s role as colonist, including his involvement in the murder of Aboriginal people in Tasmania in the early 1800s.
The memorial’s toppling came after police launched an investigation into the beheading of the statues of two former prime ministers, Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd, at the Ballarat Botanical Gardens in the early hours of Thursday.
The name plates of another 18 former Australian prime ministers’ bronze busts were damaged, with police still hunting for the culprits as of Friday.
Police estimated the damage to be more than $140,000, with each of the stolen heads valued at about $50,000.
Port Phillip Council, meanwhile, has invested about $15,000 in security measures to protect its oft-defaced Captain Cook statue at Catani Gardens in St Kilda in the days surrounding Sunday’s Australia Day.
The statue, which was sawn off at the ankles on January 25 last year, is under 24/7 guard and the council’s mobile CCTV trailer is stationed nearby streaming to St Kilda Police Station.
The council has also paid $4000 for a 3D digital scan to be kept as a template of the Captain Cook statue.
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Cassandra Morgan is a breaking news reporter at The Age.Connect via Twitter or email.
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